Recipes: Cage-free cooking

Date: 10.09.2013

We are pleased to be able to offer you this excerpt from Made With Love: The Cage-free Farming Cookbook, courtesy of Random House Books NZ, which offers gorgeous recipes for cruelty-free cooking from well-known New Zealanders.

Cage-free cooking

Michael Van de Elzen's bacon and egg wrap

Here's a fabulous alternative to the good old bacon and egg pie. It's low fat and looks so beautiful when you slice into it. When I sold it to the axe-men at Puhoi, it went down a treat. Serves 1

BROAD BEAN SALSA

1 tsp rice bran oil

1 leek (white part only), finely sliced

2 handfuls of spinach, blanched, drained and squeezed dry

½ cup broad beans, blanched and podded

½ cup frozen peas, blanched

Method: Heat the oil in a frying pan, add the leek and cook until soft. Place the cooked leek in a bowl, add the remaining salsa ingredients and toss together. Set aside. Heat a sandwich press. Lay a tortilla on a chopping board. Spread with the salsa and top with bacon. Place the cooked eggs on top and roll up tightly. Cook in a hot sandwich press for 2–3 minutes. Slice in half to serve.

FOR EACH WRAP

1 wholemeal tortilla

2 rashers lean SPCA Blue Tick

bacon, cooked and sliced

2 poached SPCA Blue Tick eggs

2 tbsp broad bean salsa

Stephen Donald's Whitebait Fritters

Method: Put the whitebait in a large bowl. Add the eggs and if the mixture needs more fluid add a dash of Waikato Draught. Heat a little butter in a frying pan or on the hot plate of a barbecue, then cook tablespoonfuls of fritter mixture. Flip when crispy brown. Serve straight from the pan or hot plate with some lemon juice or make a sandwich with fresh white bread and tomato sauce.

Method: Preheat the oven to 170°C.Cook the unpeeled whole potatoes in boiling salted water. Drain and when cool, peel and halve. Meanwhile, separately blanch the baby carrots, fennel bulbs and snowpeas in boiling salted water. Refresh in icy water and set aside. Break the garlic bulb into individual cloves and wrap in foil. Roast until tender.

To make the dressing, process the garlic, sugar, salt and vinegar in a high-speed blender until the sugar dissolves. Lower the speed and add the mustard, then drizzle in the olive oil. Set aside.

Heat a large, heavy-based ovenproof frying pan. Season the chicken breasts with salt, then place in the heated pan, skin side down. Place the pan in the oven for 12–15 minutes. Remove from the oven and rest the chicken for 5 minutes before serving. Pan-fry the chorizo until cooked. Add the potatoes, carrots and fennel. Place in the oven for 5 minutes. Add the roasted garlic and snowpeas and toss lightly. Blanch the radishes in boiling salted water and butter. Add to the vegetable mix.

To serve, slice the chicken breasts and divide between four plates. Add the vegetables and mustard cress. Drizzle with mustard dressing.

Juliette Banks's Flourless Orange Chocolate Cake

Dairy, gluten and wheat free, this is a delicious, moist cake with a great orangey tang and, when made with SPCA Blue Tick eggs, it's the perfect guilt-free afternoon tea treat to have with your girlfriends. Makes a 20cm cake.

Ingredients

1 large orange

6 SPCA Blue Tick eggs

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

2½ cups ground almonds

½ cup caster sugar

1/3 cup cocoa

GANACHE

½ cup cream

2 tbsp butter

200g dark chocolate, finely chopped

Method: Place the large orange in a saucepan of water. Bring to the boil and simmer for one hour or until soft. Cool. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Line a 20cm cake tin with baking paper. Pulp orange in a food processor or chop and mash well in a large bowl. Add the eggs, baking powder, baking soda, ground almonds, sugar and cocoa. Pulse in the processor or whisk until well combined. Scrape the mixture into the prepared tin. Bake for 1 hour or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Check after 45 minutes and cover the cake if the top is getting too brown. Leave to cool in the tin or turn out on a wire rack. When cold, glaze with ganache and top with orange slices (see methods below).

To make the ganache — heat the cream and butter in a saucepan. Remove from heat and stir in the chocolate. Stir until the chocolate has melted and the mixture is glossy.

Put the orange slices in a saucepan with the water. Bring to the boil, then reduce heat and cook for about 10 minutes or until soft. Add more water to cover, and the sugar. Cook until the liquid reduces by half. Lay orange slices on a tray. Place in the oven and bake at 180°C for 20 minutes or until slightly caramelised.